Briefly resurfacing from vacation. Much has happened in the last three weeks. This is a long one: find a nice sunny (or shady) spot to settle down, read, and enjoy.
(Vacation time isn’t over. Updates will remain irregular until the end of August.)
Mojave and iOS 12 are now at beta 5. There may be Photoshop on iPad. Apple had a record quarter (once again) and is the first company to be traded at a market cap of 1 trillion USD. They also cancelled the affiliate program for Apps on iOS and macOS.
About the last topic: I use affiliate links for apps and books in this newsletter and other posts on the weblog. I don’t make much money from them – it adds up to be enough to afford a movie on iTunes every month or so. The affiliate rate for books remains unchanged (for now). Only Apple has the full insight to the numbers involved, but this still seems like a petty move from Apple.
In this time of free services and apps, writing a review or article that convinces someone to part with their money is not easy. If you can pull that off, affiliate links can be a way to earn money from writing (or podcasts, or videos) without filling up your site with obnoxious ads that are not under your control.
Doing so on a scale that the payout is actually worth the effort is incredibly hard. You have to build up a reputation and trustworthiness with your writing (or videos or podcasts). This takes a lot of time and effort. In the end, Apple and the producer (developer, author, etc.) profit from a good review or recommendation. This should have been a win-win-win situation.
Of course, Apple can do what they want and is not and has never been obliged to provide or continue this program. But I am sad that the affiliate program for Apps is going away, as many sites that I enjoy and appreciate will suffer from it. I believe this is a wrong step for the community and eco-system.
If you want to support this newsletter and my weblog (so I can keep buying new movies), buy my books!
In other book- and milestone-related news: This week I sold my 1000th book on the iBooks Store.
A huge “thank you” to everyone who put enough trust in my writing to buy one or more of my books. Even more thanks to those who recommend the books on Slack, conferences, in personal discussion and with reviews on the store. (Seriously, please leave a review!) Writing and publishing continues to be an exhilarating, rewarding and humbling experience.
On to the next book and the next 1000 sales!
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Headlines
- Apple CEO calls $1 trillion value a ‘milestone’ but not a focus – Stephen Nellis, Reuters
- Read Tim Cook’s Email To Employees About Apple’s $1 Trillion Milestone – John Paczkowski, Buzzfeed
On Scripting OS X
News and Opinion
- Adobe to Launch Photoshop for iPad in Strategy Shift – Marc Gurman, Nico Grant, Bloomberg
- Popular Open Source Tools for Mac Admins – SimpleMDM
- Is XProtect dead, or about to be replaced? – Howard Oakley
- Mac Admins at Penn State Wrap-Up – Anthony Reimer
- The iPad vs. Mac Juxtaposition – Neil Cybart
- Please Follow TidBITS in Apple News! – TidBITS (Note: Scripting OS X is also available in Apple News! Go and follow me there, too!)
- Apple Kills the App Store Affiliate Program, and I Have No Idea What We Are Going to Do. – TouchArcade
- Apple’s Affiliate Program and The Sweet Setup – Shawn Blanc, The Sweet Setup
- Apple’s Termination of App Store Affiliate Payments Is Unnecessary, Mean-Spirited, and Harmful – Adam Engst, TidBITS
- Small-but-important details from Apple’s Q4 2018 financials call – Dan Moren, MacWorld
macOS Mojave
- Chase Lau/mojave-wallpaper-generator
- Otto the Automator: “Simple Automator workflow becomes a Touch Bar Quick Action in macOS Mojave for accessing your entire photo library regardless of which application if frontmost!…”
- How to install the macOS Mojave public beta on a separate APFS volume – Apple Support
- Otto the Automator: “Automator and AppleScript combine to deliver a macOS Mojave Touch Bar Quick Action for switching the startup disk. A perfect task for automation”
MacAdmins on Twitter
- William Smith: “After two days of trying to reformat PDF text and pictures on my #psumac slides to fit all my presenter notes, a simple 2-minute AppleScript fixes my problem. tell application ”Keynote“ to set size of presenter notes of every slide of front document to 18 #voilà”
- Nigel Kersten: “It’s been a long time since I last made the NVRAM claw. ⌘ ⌥ O F Never Forget.”
- Tim Perfitt: “Ok, so after many tried, this works reliably: power down, then power up. As soon as the apple appears, press control option on left side and shift on right along with power. Keep holding until the machine powers down and a bit more. It then goes into DFU.” (Thread)
- Nikolaj Schlej: “macOS 10.13.6 update brings (limited) UEFI SecureBoot support for iMac Pro, so now if SecureBoot is enabled, Windows detects that and acts accordingly. PK, KEK, db and dbx are read-only (hence limited), configured to trust MS 1st-party CA only.…”
- Emily St: “Extremely cool macOS information for mega-nerds: If you’re wondering what iCloud Drive is up to in a given moment, a command will tell you all the transactions it’s running:
brctl log --wait --shortenRecommend piping that tolessbecause it’s a huge log of output.” - Ryan Govostes: “Early screenshot of System Integrity Protection, MacOS 8.0 (1997)… ”
- Jordan Morgan: “A fun bit of #macOS development history I stumbled upon today, Apple Tech Note 2034. Essentially it included a bunch of guidelines and tips on macOS development but contained such inflammatory assertions that Apple straight up pulled it down (2033/5 are still there)!” (Thread)
Bugs and Security
- Hackers Used Malicious MDM Solution to Spy On ‘Highly Targeted’ iPhone Users – Swati Khandelwal, Hacker News
- Recent High Sierra and Security Updates patched a serious Bluetooth bug – Howard Oakley
- Block Blocking Login Items
- Escaping the Sandbox – Microsoft Office on MacOS – MDSec
- Automated macOS malware submissions “infecting” VirusTotal – Sentinel One
Support and HowTos
- Should you try repairing permissions in High Sierra or later? – Howard Oakley
- Link to your Slack profile for instant messaging – William Smith
- SSH key: How to use the keychain for the passphrase — François Leveaux-Tiffreau (see also: SSH Keys, Part 2: Client Verification)
- macOS VPN architecture from System Preferences down to nesessionmanager – Timac
- Grep Compatible Search & Replace In BBEdit – Tony Williams
- Help other Mac admins find your scripts on GitHub with Topics – Emily Kausalik
- Booting Secure – Mike Lynn
- The mystery of the Supplemental Update – Howard Oakley
- Syntax highlighting in Apple Keynote Using highlight – Tim Sutton
- Apple Platform SDK API Differences – Code Workshop
- iOS Version History Chart – Will Hains
- InstallEnterpriseApplication MDM Command – SimpleMDM
- How to Set up Time Machine Server – Stephen Hackett, 512 Pixels
- Notarization: a big step forward for users and developers – Hoawrd Oakley
- What happens when you open a quarantined app? – Howard Oakley
Scripting and Automation
- Automating AutoPkg and JSSImporter setup – Rich Trouton
- My Bootstrappr Workflow – GMarnin
- Disks, partitions, volumes, containers – Howard Oakley
- “Imaging is dead!” Now what? (Part 1) — Jamf Blog, Part 2, Part 3. Also, this comment by Joseph Chilcote on Twitter
Apple Support
- Use True Tone on your MacBook Pro
- About encrypted storage on your new Mac
- If the fans in your Mac run at full speed when you turn it on
- Restore Apple T2 firmware on 2018 MacBook Pro
- About the Apple Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) Cable
Updates and Releases
- SAP/macOS-enterprise-privileges
- WiFi Explorer Lite (Mac AppStore, Full Version)
- Jamf Pro 10.6
- Archiware P5 5.5.6
- Bite size command line! – Julia Evans
- Certificate Request – Twocanoes Software
To Watch
To Listen
- Ponying Your Coworkers, with Ross Derewianko – Mac Admins Podcast
- SecureToken, JumpCloud, and the Hunt for the Great White Whale – Mac Admins Podcast
- Naveen & John talk VMware – Mac Admins Podcast
Just for Fun
- Apple celebrates World Emoji Day
- MacAdmin Stickers for Messages
- All the iOS and Mac wallpapers, past and present – Dave Mark, The Loop
Support
There are no ads on my webpage or this newsletter. If you are enjoying what you are reading here, please spread the word and recommend it to another Mac Admin!
If you want to support me and this website even further, then consider buying one (or all) of my books. It’s like a subscription fee, but you also get a useful book or two extra!